CAIRO — Voting began Sunday in Egypt's first parliamentary elections in four years, to replace the legislature that was dissolved in 2012 and to add legitimacy to the government of President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi. But Mona Ahmed, 20, said she was skipping the polls.
"Everyone is lying to everyone," she said, wearily, echoing the apathy and cynicism that helped entrench autocracy here for decades. Other young people in the Giza district of greater Cairo, interviewed on the eve of the balloting, felt much the same.
Yara Essam, 21, said she felt "suffocated" by politics. She had voted only once, for el-Sissi, and said she regretted it. "He didn't do anything," she said, citing the struggles of her family's business. "Nothing is going right."
Saad Eid, 20, knew vaguely that elections were being held but could not recall when. In any case, he said, "There is no power, except the army."
The parliamentary contest, to elect 568 lawmakers, will be held in two rounds of voting through November and is widely expected to deliver a legislature loyal to el-Sissi, a former general who led a military takeover of Egypt's government in the summer of 2013. The lines at several polling stations on Sunday appeared to be short or nonexistent, forcing the government to declare a half-day holiday for state workers on Monday in an effort to increase participation.
The disaffection of young people, though, seems hard to reverse, further eroding the gains in political participation that followed the uprising against President Hosni Mubarak in 2011.
The government has hailed the voting as a critical step in completing a transition to democracy that it says began with the takeover. Yet the practical powers of the parliament remain unclear: It has significant authority, including to impeach the president, but el-Sissi and his allies have suggested that they would seek to amend the constitution to reduce the lawmakers' power, and increase those of the president.
El-Sissi's takeover removed Egypt's first fairly elected president, Mohammed Morsi, and suppressed Morsi's movement, the Muslim Brotherhood, which was the country's most powerful political force and had been the main opposition under Mubarak.
The Brotherhood's political wing was the largest vote-getter in the last parliamentary elections, after the revolt that overthrew Mubarak. But the Brotherhood, which has been banned, is not competing in the current elections, nor is any other organized political force that seriously opposes el-Sissi's agenda.
The candidates do, however, include hundreds of former members of Mubarak's governing National Democratic Party, who are expected to benefit from local patronage networks that have remained intact during the years of political turmoil since the revolt.
The only organized Islamist party competing in the elections is Al Nour, a Salafist party that was once allied with the Brotherhood but supported the military ouster of Morsi.
The voting on Sunday was the eighth time since 2011 that Egyptians have gone to the polls. The public's lack of enthusiasm seemed matched by that of the government, which did not stage the kind of public relations campaign — for example, explaining how to vote — that it had before past elections.
An 11th-hour speech by el-Sissi on Saturday, encouraging people to vote, did little to move Egyptians conditioned by the elections of recent years that were staged with great fanfare, but the results subsequently nullified.
"We have voted a lot," said Ibrahim Hassan, 37. "All this turned out for nothing. We did nothing. There is nothing new. So we will vote, and I know that this parliament will be dissolved."
Ahmed Ali, a 28-year old candidate trying to drum up votes in El-Marg, a neighborhood northeast of the capital, said, "There is a sense of political exhaustion."
The government itself is partly responsible for the fatigue, and has suggested that the problems Egypt faces are above local politics, and stem mainly from various foreign threats, including jihadi militancy. Militant groups, mostly operating in the Sinai Peninsula, have carried out attacks on government security forces for more than two years. The authorities have invoked such threats to justify a sweeping crackdown on Islamists, as well as other government opponents.
Ali said the biggest challenge facing the new parliament would be from "international terrorism in neighboring countries," echoing the government line. At the same time, the district where he campaigned is a case study in government neglect and mismanagement, lacking critical medical services and an adequate number of public schools for the bursting population.
The neighborhood sprang up over the last few decades, built with little planning on agricultural land. El-Sissi's government paved roads and built a bridge, but the poorest corners of the district still seem on the verge of collapse, crisscrossed by sewage ditches that look like country streams but for the garbage floating on top.
As Ali campaigned on a recent day, he laid out an ambitious plan reflecting his main concerns and those of his liberal party, the Free Egyptians, focusing on providing health care and education and on attracting investment to Egypt through less stringent laws.
Among those he met, there was skepticism that the new parliament, or any other part of the government, would be able to provide relief. Mesallem Hamed, who works with a local civic organization, listened to Ali and said afterward that his organization had been trying for nearly 20 years to attract government support.
"Not a penny came from the state," Hamed said.